legs, crushing it and scattering glass everywhere. Behind her the door is weakening, barely hanging on its hinges, and I wonder how much of that is her doing, because the weight of those animals out there combined with their infuriated battering, should have brought it down long before now.
“I have to tell you,” she says, kicking aside a rough chunk of obsidian. “Although I ache in parts of me I wasn’t aware I had, this is turning out to be quite a lot of fun.”
There’s a whoosh of air, a sickening crack I’ve mistakenly thought has come from the door, and she stops with a sudden intake of breath, shudders, and looks down at the point of an arrow which is sticking out of her cheek, black blood dripping from the tip.
Red Cloud, still burning, reloads. But his movements have slowed and fresh flame has begun to erupt from those cracks in his body. He’s wreathed in smoke and wavering.
There isn’t much time.
The scream does not come again.
Too much time has passed.
Whatever thrall has held him here ebbs away at last, and Kyle runs. His initial awe and fear at seeing them forgotten, he steps off the path and right into the middle of the herd. They don’t so much move to accommodate him, as grudgingly let him infiltrate their number. Flies buzz his face. Warm bodies try to crush him between them. Antlers scratch his cheek, stab his flesh, but he continues on, aware that he still has the gun if one of the deer should decide to take him on. He fights his way through until he is almost there and almost out of breath. His throat aches. Anticipating a struggle with the animals that are busy ramming the door like maddened things, he is surprised when they stop their assault, look back at him, and slowly lope away. The wind seems to whisper, as Kyle moves quickly into the gap they’ve left for him, cocks back the hammer on the gun, and throws the door open.
I watch Lian Su’s expression change from hate, to rage, to pleading, as she spins around to greet the boy in the doorway. To greet my son.
“They hurt me,” his mother tells him, and Kyle feels every ounce of his resolve turn to dust.
“Mom?”
She nods slowly, a creature of ethereal beauty, her hair lustrous, skin pale. She is naked, but he does not register this for now. All he can see are her eyes, which look bloated and black. She reaches out to him in a gesture of pleading. She is asking him to save her. But from what?
He tears his fascinated and heartbroken gaze away from her to the burning Indian in the corner, watches as it topples and falls to the floor. The flames are mirrored a thousand times in the shards of black glass scattered around the floor like frozen puddles of oil. Blue Moon and Red Cloud. Dead. He feels a pang of sadness, but it is no more resonant than a gunshot on a battlefield. There is too much else to see, to understand.
Then he does.
Standing a short distance behind his mother is a gaunt old man dressed in a dark raincoat, one eye milky white in the light from the flames, the other staring at him.
Cadaver. The puppeteer.
Kyle steps into the bar, the gun held out before him, aimed at the old man. “You son of a bitch.”
His mother drifts aside, her face filled with pride and pain.
Kyle glances at her. “He brought you back?”
“It’s not her,” Cadaver tells him.
“You shut the fuck up, all right? I’m talking to her.”
“Yes,” his mother tells him, “but it was a trick. He tricked me. Tricked your father too.”
Kyle stops dead. “Where is he?”
“He killed him.”
He returns his gaze to the old man, who suddenly looks scared and helpless, and that encourages him. “I asked you a question.”
There are no words to make him understand, no way to make him believe me, because all the things I could say about his life, the things only a father would know, are a mystery to me. He stands there, Lian Su watching with malevolent glee, and the fire in his eyes does not come from the blaze that has consumed Red Cloud and is rapidly spreading, licking at the walls. This fire is his and I recognize it immediately. When I brought him back from the dead, it might have been forgotten, replaced by the shock of his resurrection, but it never left him. That same fire has marked the worst times of his life, and I’ve been there for them all, been the genesis of most of them.
But there is nothing I can say. Instead, I change the focus from me to the grinning witch to my left. “She’s not your mother.”
“That so?”
“Yes it is so. Her name is Lian Su. She tricked all of us into believing she was Gracie for years, but she isn’t. She murdered our friends and now she’s trying to destroy everything else. Don’t let her fool you.”
“Fool me?” He grins crookedly, comes closer, the gun held steady in his grip, the muzzle aimed at my face. “You’re the only one who did that. Was it you who brought me back from the dead after I refused your deal?”
“No. Your father did.”
“And in return…?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t.” Agony makes a melting mask of his face. In an instant, he has closed the distance between us and the muzzle of the gun is a hard cold circle pressed between my eyes. “Start talking.”
“There’s nothing to say. If you believe that woman is your mother, then you’ll die.”
“And what do you suggest I do?”
“Start believing the truth.”
There are faces at the door, animal faces, but they’re not interested in this little showdown. All their eyes are cast down, toward the remains of Red Cloud and Blue Moon. I guess for them, the hunt is over. Kyle’s is too; he just doesn’t know it yet.
“Your voice…” he says, frowning.
Maybe he does know; maybe he suspects. I say a silent prayer.
“What about it?” With my good eye, I stare hard at him.
“You’re not using the…whatever it was.”
“Do you want to know why?”
He shakes his head, swallows. “What was the bargain? Tell me.”
“Him for you.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Then…then what happened? Where is he?”
“You were always a smart kid, Kyle. Figure it out.”
At length, he does. The gun lowers just a fraction, but the expression of confusion on his face tells me that somewhere within him, he is trying to understand, considering the possibilities. Like the possibility that his father would trade places with Cadaver to get his son back.
For a long moment nothing is said, but the gun drops another inch lower and the hand holding it is no longer so sure. He closes his eyes, shakes his head as if to deny the suggestion that I am willing him to believe.
“He wouldn’t do it. He didn’t have the guts.”
“Yes I did.”
I cannot grant my own wishes, can’t make my own world change its axis, but nevertheless I’ve used every ounce of wishful thinking I’ve got to summon from my rotten throat those three words, spoken in a voice that is
